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"In Politics, Perception is Reality" - short wisdoms from Elisabeth A. Lindenmeyer

United Nation's expert Elisabeth A. Lindenmeyer shared her views with a couple SIPA students about the legitimacy of the Security Council, Syrian crisis, and whether or not we should be talking to the bad guys of International Affairs. In very short:

What is the UN, who is the UN? is the question we should be asking ourselves. When we say "the UN failed, the UN succeeded", are we talking about the UN of Member States? The UN of "We, the People?"? The UN of the Agencies? The UN is not monolithic.

Do we have a human threshold in humanitarian crisis? is also a tough question. When the Member States are blocking intervention, is there a point at which we can say: that's just too much. Close to 800 000 people died in Rwanda without the UN getting involved...

Is the Security Council legitimate? The perception of it not being legitimate is important enough. In Politics, perception is reality. If perception is that the 177 other Member States aren't represented by this Security Council because power has shifted elsewhere, well that's the reality. An effective way to bring a fast solution to this would be to modify the working methods. For instance, it could be suggested that when in a humanitarian crisis, there's no possible use of veto. Changing the working methods is much easier than changing status and compositions, and could be very effective.

Should we talk to the bad guys? The answer's yes. To everyone. Including pirates in Somalia. Politics is human - exclusion is a cause of war.

More about Prof. Lindenmeyer here.

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